Grandma's Secret Pie Crust Recipe with Tips for the Perfect Pie Crust (2024)

FAQs

What are the 5 tips for pie perfection? ›

1. Use Very Cold Butter or Fat. Butter, shortening, lard, or suet—whatever fat the recipe calls for should be well-chilled and cut into small pieces to start with for the flakiest crust in the end. The fat in a pie crust must maintain some of its integrity in the dough to make the crust truly flaky.

Chill in the fridge for 30 minutes, or up to overnight. Tip: Chilling hardens the fat in the dough, which will help the crust maintain its structure as it bakes. And the short rest before rolling relaxes the dough's gluten, helping prevent a tough crust.

Sugar: Not all pie crusts have sugar, but those that do will be more tender since sugar interferes with gluten development. In our experience, sugar can also make the pie dough so tender that it's hard to roll out and transfer to your pan without breaking. Egg: This makes the dough more pliable and easy to roll out.

Keep the Butter Cold

If your butter melts during the mixing or rolling process—before the pie crust hits the oven—you won't achieve those flaky layers we're looking for in this buttery pastry. With this goal in mind, the cardinal rule of pie crusts is to keep things as cold as possible.

The cardinal rules of pie dough: Keep it cold, work fast, and don't overwork your dough.

A: First, don't just reach for more flour—too much extra flour will make the crust tough, and won't treat the real problem, which is that your butter is too soft. I recently read in Weller's cookbook A Good Bake that it should take no more than one to two minutes to roll out a pie crust.

“My preferred fat for pie crusts will always be butter. To me, it is all about flavor, and no other fat gives flavor to a crust like butter does. Other fats, even though they have great pros, lack flavor,” De Sa Martins said. “The more flavorful the butter, the more flavor your pie crust will have,” Huntsberger added.

This is really the game changing tip: a really cold pie dough is so much easier to roll than a slightly chilled pie dough. Almost every pie dough recipe I have ever seen says to chill your pie dough for two hours.

Do I really need to rest my pie dough for at least an hour before rolling it out and then freeze my pie crust before baking it off? ›

The chilling time allows the gluten in the dough to relax and prevent shrinking when baking. So I recommend freezing the pie crust for at least 1 hour before pre baking. If you have time, I recommend freezing for even longer—preferably overnight, but for as long as 3 months.

As a general rule, your dough should be about 2-3 inches larger than your pie plate. So, if you are using a 9-inch pie plate, you want your dough rolled out to a 12-inch diameter. This gives you 9 inches to cover the bottom, an inch for each side, and a little bit of breathing room.

The acid in the apple cider vinegar tenderizes the dough by slowing the gluten production in the dough. This prevents it from getting tough and elastic like bread dough. Love me tender. If you've ever bitten into a slice of pie with a tough crust, you know the value in a tender, flaky pie crust.

Some bakers use milk or buttermilk in their pie crust. Thanks to their milk solids, both will help crust brown and add a bit of tenderness. But the classic liquid in pie crust is water — ice water, to be precise.

In the strategy presented, the mnemonic PIES is used to describe a 4-step process for solving word problems in which the acronym is described as P=Picture (draw a simple sketch) based on the situation described by the word problem), I=Information (circle key words in the problem and write next to picture), E=Equation ( ...

The following are characteristics of a good pie:

Crust is flaky and tender. Filling is firm, smooth, and sufficiently cooked. Flavor is well-blended, with the filling characteristic for that kind of pie. It holds its form when served.

To win this competition no hands may be used. Contestants must place their hands behind their backs while eating the pie. Contestants must not touch / eat any pie until the start signal is given. The first person to finish his/her pie will throw their hands in the air to end the contest and be declared the winner.